Focus on Friendship ‘Yakkers’ make a splash every Thursday

Thursday

Aug 22, 2013 at 3:15 AM

By Stacy LivingstonSanford News Correspondent

SANFORD — It’s not hard to see what local resident Wanda Johnson, Angela Diorio, Kathy Erickson, Karen McManus, Belinda Morrill, Carolyn Woodward, Denise Allaire, and Ann Vermette have in common if you look at their cars. While the styles and sizes range, they all have one critical feature: the means to carry a kayak.

Johnson and company constitute the core members of a group they call “The Yakkers,” which travels to bodies of water near and far in search of a good time with friends and kayaks.

The group has been meeting on Thursdays during the summers for 13 years now, and started humbly. During the first year, Johnson explains, she and a friend, Patty Theriault, started taking regular kayaking trips. Allaire joined them the next year, and a year after that Vermette, and according to Johnson, “after that, it just exploded.”

Though the group comes together over a love of kayaking, they stay together over a love of one another. “Thursdays are good for the soul,” say the Yakkers, all close friends.

“We mostly just float and talk,” Johnson said last Thursday.

That may be selling the group a bit short. They generally spend the greater part of a day on the water, setting off around nine or ten in the morning and getting back ashore around two in the afternoon. On some of the longer trips, the group doesn’t return home until the early evening.

The Yakkers have traveled as far as Conway, Keiser Lake, and Bear Pond, though they also frequent more local spots, such as Square Pond.

“We’ve been around,” Johnson said.

The group has big plans, though, to get even further from their usual stomping grounds.

“We’d love to get up to Rangeley and do an overnight or something,” Johnson said. “It’s always an adventure.”

The group fondly recounts their years together, reminiscing about the namesakes of their respective kayaks, which are “Flash” and “Ms. Chief” and other fun names. They have nicknames for one another as well — Wanda Johnson, for example, is “Mama Duck.”

“Mama Duck” and the her ducklings chuckled last Thursday over stories of kayaks being lost off the tops of cars, members overdressing for the weather, islands that were bigger than they’d thought, and breaks to swim.

The Yakkers say that while many property owners are happy to see the group, others are less than receptive to giving them space to swim.

“It’s tough to sit in a kayak all day in the heat,” Johnson said. “And we wish that property owners would be receptive to us, and invite us ashore more often.”

Regardless of this minor hiccup, the Yakkers still have a blast every Thursday. Though many of the members “go way back” to before the Yakkers even existed, the continuity and reliability of the group has brought these ladies even closer together.

Whether it’s the kayaks or friendship, for the Yakkers, there’s something in the water.